The PRV Report Card: This Week’s Winners & Losers

PR WINNER OF THE WEEK: “A” (PR PERFECT) to fast food workers around the globe who coordinated a protest against low wages, staging what appears to be the world’s largest one-day walkout. Workers in more than 30 countries, including the US, Brazil, Italy and China, participated, earning them headlines in dozens of media outlets. The grassroots movement has come a long way from its start 18 months ago, when about 200 workers in New York took to the streets to protest their pay. McDonald’s, for one, seems unsure how to respond; it removed from its website a statement claiming protesters were outside groups, not employees, and replaced it with one saying the company respects workers’ rights to express themselves. And the pressure is paying off: Seattle’s mayor has proposed raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in his city.

PR LOSER OF THE WEEK: “F” (Full Fiasco) to the Federal Communications Commission, which took action yesterday that could ultimately end net neutrality – even as commissioners pledged their support for it. The FCC’s vote opens a period of public comment on a proposal that Agency Chairman Tom Wheeler contends will preserve an open Internet while creating a two-tiered level of service. Critics and neutrality “purists” disagree, and one commissioner who voted for the plan nonetheless said the agency “moved too fast.” There’s a four-month comment period before any vote. Perhaps by then the agency can explain how allowing providers to create distinctions between basic and premium offerings does not divide the Internet into haves and have-nots.

THE PRV “THERE’S NO ‘THERE’ THERE” AWARD to Karl Rove,who unwittingly provided former President Bill Clinton with a brilliant opportunity for a “gotcha” after suggesting that Hillary Clinton might have brain damage. Rove was referring to the possible effects of a head injury Clinton suffered from a fall in 2012. Former President Clinton chuckled, saying “First [Republicans] said she faked her concussion, and now they’re saying she’s auditioning for a part on The Walking Dead.” Point: Clinton.